Chapter 5: Scanning Web Servers
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is arguably one of the most popular protocols in use today. Web servers have moved from serving static pages to handling complex web applications with user interaction. This evolution of web technologies opens the door to tainted user input that could change an application's logic to perform unintended malicious actions. Modern web development frameworks allow almost anyone with some knowledge of programming to produce web applications in minutes, but this has also caused an increase in the number of vulnerable applications on the internet. The number of available HTTP scripts for the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) has grown over the years, and Nmap turned into an invaluable web scanner that helps penetration testers. Not only can it be used to find vulnerable web applications or detect incorrect configuration settings, but Nmap can also crawl web applications looking for all sorts of interesting information.
This...